10TV: Kelton House Museum and Garden spooks guests and staff with ghostly visits
The 1852 mansion built by Fernando Cortez and Sophia Stone Kelton, the Kelton House is now a museum on Town Street in Columbus.
The 1852 mansion built by Fernando Cortez and Sophia Stone Kelton, the Kelton House is now a museum on Town Street in Columbus.
While family members who lived in the home are long gone, there are reports their spirits still live there and keep a watch on the living.
It’s a place where souls of Columbus past, are pictured on the walls but the former residents of the Kelton House may not be as long gone as we think.
“Oh, definitely I’ve had so many experiences personally. I cannot begin to explain, even from a skeptical viewpoint,” Kelton House docent Nellie Kampmann explains.
Nellie Kampmann works at the 166-year-old home of Fernando Cortez and Sophia Kelton.
She also leads ghost tours in the museum, where she dresses the part while sharing her personal interactions with the apparitions.
Like the time she was dusting the phonograph.
“All of a sudden I hear “hhhhh” which is not exactly the noise you want to hear in a haunted house,” she says, “I turned the knob to turn it to off and I still heard it, so the thing has been playing without being turned on at all.”
Nellie’s sure it was the work of a ghost. like the time the lights turned on.
“As I was looking at it the lights were on full blast but the lights weren’t penetrating the room, and then i realized the ghosts was playing a prank on me,” she says.
One of the most common ghost pranks that’s played at the Kelton House, has to do with the dolls. The people that work here say every once in a while they’ll come in and the doll will be flipped over.
“This kind of thing happens so frequently. they’re very playful. They’re having fun with me,” she says.
They’re lucky Nellie is open to their ghostly antics, understanding why they stick around.
“I think because it’s their home and they like it. The first ghost we know about died in the civil war and as far as i can figure he came back to be with his family,” Kampmann says, “We’re visitors in their home.”
